Insider 9/24/2010

There have been multiple people asking how the stone was painted on the Skorne Immortal that I did a couple of blogs ago. I answered one of the forum replies, but I feel I should write a little tutorial on how it was done. You asked, and now you shall receive.

I started off with a basecoat of Trollblood Highlight mixed with Morrow White. Next, with a mix of Trollblood Highlight and Thamar Black, I painted in the cracks on the mini. As you see, I added onto the preexisting cracks and created some more. With a wash of Armor Wash, Mixing Medium, and more water than normal to make it thin, I washed the entire stone area. After this dried, I highlighted the raised areas and under the cracks with a lighter valued mix of the basecoat (more white). I also added some dots here and there to give the surface more of that stone look. That’s all I did; simple and fast.

It’s the cracks that really convince you the model’s surface is stone. If I were doing this same technique on a larger surface, I would have wetbrushed the basecoat with the dark mix I used for the cracks as the second step to give some different tones to the stone. Wetbrushing is kind of like drybrushing but with more paint on the brush and a heavier hand. I have also heard it called stippling, but it’s really more of a smearing action. With a smaller mini like this one, I omitted that step.

I can already hear it, “What the hell is a wetbrush smear?” Well, it looks like I need to convince Jason Soles we need a big, 50mm-based Skorne Immortal monstrosity to paint the smear on…

I hope this helps, and I appreciate the interest.